Getting the practical teaching element right
‘.you both walk away with a record of it, and I think having the discussion as
the trainees go away in reflective mode and thinking about the next session,
you don't retain everything from those discussions and you need something
written to capture the points you may not have fully absorbed during the
discussion.'
The teacher educators interviewed spoke of the importance of teaching
observations being conducted by a member of the core teacher education team
so that feedback both refers to past course input and also informs future course
input, thus ensuring a thorough feedback loop, contributing to a full integration
of theory and practice:
‘.the tutor is the ongoing link, they know that person's teaching and obviously
they try to link their feedback to what they have been doing on the course.'
‘.for example when we found that one thing that everyone seemed to have
difficulty with [in teaching observed by teacher educators] was setting
objectives on their lesson plans and so [.] we added in a session for everyone
on setting aims and objectives.'
‘.people bump into new problems when they are actually in the classrooms
(observing). Those are issues we'll come back to the training course with and
we'll look at strategies and pump those back in.'
These points highlight the importance of shared systems for monitoring in all
contexts, but particularly where there are three people involved: trainee, trainer
and mentor. Written records of formative feedback discussions are essential both
as a record for the trainee and as reference for the trainer and mentor. Where
different people are involved in observing an individual trainee at different times,
it is the written record of action points agreed that forms the essential continuity
for the trainee (see example format in Appendix 3).
26